Alberta's “controversial” bill to extend pro-choice protection to doctors who refuse to assist with abortions or suicide
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Summary
Is it pro-choice to force a doctor to refer someone for an abortion? The Alberta government is introducing a bill that gives doctors the choice to opt out of referring patients for abortions or assisted suicide. Is that Pro-Life or Pro-Death?
Transcript
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Hello, my rebels. Today, I talk about the war against pro-choice.
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That's what the media party calls it, but really, it's the Alberta government
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introducing a bill to give physicians the choice to opt out of referring patients
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for abortions or assisted suicide. Is it pro-choice to force a doctor
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to refer someone for an abortion? I'll go through and I'll show you how the media,
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they use one word to describe this bill over and over again.
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I wonder if you can guess in advance what that is.
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Tonight, does pro-choice include whether a doctor has the choice not to help someone
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get an abortion or commit suicide? I've got news from Alberta. It's November 8th,
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Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
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There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
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The only thing I have to say to the government about why I'm publishing it is because it's
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You know there are no abortion laws in Canada at all, right? Literally no laws.
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In the 1980s, there was a Supreme Court of Canada ruling that threw the matter back to Parliament
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and told them to write a law, and then the unelected Senate killed it in a tie vote.
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A tie vote in our unelected, unaccountable Senate.
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You can literally abort a little baby for any reason or no reason right up until the moment of birth.
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One minute before the baby's born, you can abort it.
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In fact, there is an extreme procedure called a partial birth abortion,
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where the healthy baby is partly delivered and it's aborted during its birth.
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A decade ago, when I published the magazine called The Western Standard,
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we did a study on sex-select abortions by Asian immigrants,
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as in Chinese and South Asian families, who didn't want girls.
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So they'd get pregnant, and then they would go to the doctor to find out the sex of the baby.
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And if it was a boy, great, they'd proceed with the birth.
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If it was a girl baby, they would get an abortion and then try again for a boy.
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Our reporter, Andrea Morozek, cross-referenced the sex of new babies born in certain hospitals
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with the percentage of immigrants from those cultures,
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Like I say, abortion is legal for any reason or no reason from the moment of conception to the moment of birth.
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In the lower mainland of B.C., new immigrants don't want girls, so they're aborting them.
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Do you doubt that if a gay gene were ever found, that many babies would be aborted?
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Families would test, and if there was the gay gene in their babies, they would abort them and try again.
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I mean, if a culture doesn't want girls, I'm going to guess they don't want gay boys either.
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Here's the Toronto Star talking about the same thing seven years ago in the Star.
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I'm not sure if the Star would be allowed to talk about it today.
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It would probably be called racist or something.
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For about 50 years, women were in the driver's seat politically, you know.
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What I mean by that is feminism was on the march.
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It was win after win after win for women for 50 years, I think.
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But I think that has pretty much come screeching to a halt in the past couple of years.
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Women are being erased from the podium in women's sports, for example.
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And the idea of caring about girl babies is way too pro-life for our culture in 2019.
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But I think it's true that the opposite of pro-life eventually becomes pro-death.
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That's where the anti-human environmental agenda inevitably goes.
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If you think that people are a cancer on the planet, if you believe Greta Thunberg,
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well, the logical extension is to not have any more babies, not have any more kids at all.
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Well, and then I suppose to contemplate suicide, I think that's where we are as a culture.
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And I tell you all this because there's a tiny microscopic bit of pushback going on against this culture of death right now in the province of Alberta.
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They're not looking to ban abortion or whatever Jason Kenney's shrillest opponents want to do.
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Actually, they want to bring back a little bit of pro-choice, real pro-choice.
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I think that's what they're actually doing out there.
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As in pro-choice implies that there is a choice up to you, the individual.
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So, for example, if you're a doctor and you don't believe in abortion,
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I would think that the phrase pro-choice would mean that it's up to you.
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You have the choice as a doctor not to do abortions or not to counsel abortions if you don't want to.
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I think that's what pro-choice means for a doctor.
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So recently there has been pressure on doctors who are pro-life or Christian or other religious faiths
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There's been pressure on them to comply with the culture, despite the Hippocratic oath of do no harm.
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That's the essential doctor's motto going back millennia.
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So one of the changes Kenney is introducing, or at least Kenney's government, at least the backbench MLA,
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is that doctors who are pro-life can't be forced to refer a patient for an abortion or an assisted suicide.
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It's not taking away the patient's rights to do those things.
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It's protecting the doctor's rights not to have to do those things.
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Here's a liberal named Jason Markisoff, who writes for a liberal magazine called McLean's.
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He said, Jason Kenney's party, having already rolled back LGBTQ protections,
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backed first reading for a bill that empowers doctors to refuse and not even refer for services
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Did Jason Kenney also roll back LGBTQ protections?
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Is it no longer legal to be gay married in Alberta?
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Is it now lawful for gays to be fired because they're gay or denied a bus ticket on a bus because they're gay or something?
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It's just that now, I think the change that Markisoff's referring to there, somewhat deceptively,
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it's just now that teachers, if they choose, can talk to parents about kids in gay clubs at school.
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Now, under Rachel Notley's authoritarian regime, teachers were literally forbidden by law from talking to parents about their own kids
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and what was going on with them as adolescents, even if there was a problem.
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How bizarre is that to treat parents as the enemy and even teachers as the enemy?
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That's what McLean calls a rollback, letting teachers choose to talk to parents about the kids that they're helping.
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But here's the story he linked to, Edmonton Journal story.
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Alberta private members bill aiming for physician conscience rights moves forward.
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So it's not even a Jason Kenney law, it's a backbenchers private members bill.
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A bill that aims to protect the conscience rights of physicians passed first reading in the Alberta legislature Thursday,
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cracking open a debate about the rights and responsibilities of physicians asked to assist or advise on abortions,
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UCP backbencher MLA Dan Williams introduced the private members bill to reassert
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the Charter-Protected Freedom of Conscience and Religion for Health Providers.
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Health care providers should never have to choose between their most deeply held beliefs and their job,
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said Williams in a written statement released after the vote.
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The bill would amend the Alberta Human Rights Act to include conscientious beliefs
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as a basis for protection from discrimination or refusal of employment.
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In a vote split along party lines, with all 36 UCP members in attendance voting in favor
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and all 15 NDP opposition members in attendance voting against,
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the bill has been referred to a standing committee.
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Okay, so I guess it does look like, it looks like a government bill
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But imagine voting against adding conscientious beliefs to the Alberta Human Rights Law.
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Don't we have those conscientious beliefs rooted in law right now?
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Have you ever read our Charter of Rights and Freedoms?
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Look at the very first freedom enumerated under the section called Fundamental Freedoms.
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Because everyone has the following fundamental freedoms.
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How is it a controversy that that exact same wording be put into provincial laws
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And apparently, according to the media, this is also somehow anti-gay.
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The first part of the Conscient Rights, but here.
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For greater certainty, nothing in this act derogates from a health care provider's
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or religious health care organization's obligations to their patients.
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Which may include informing individuals of options in respect of receiving a health care service.
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So this private member's bill doesn't take away any medical duties.
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It just says the patient can't force the doctor to do anything contrary to his religion.
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If a health care provider, that's a fancy way of saying a doctor,
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or religious health care organization determines that their conscientious beliefs
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would be infringed by providing a specific health care service to an individual,
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the health care provider or religious health care organization is not required to provide
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There's just some more details that you can't file a professional complaint against a doctor
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It's, I don't even think the law is necessary because it's just reasserting what the charter said.
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The media party is outraged that doctors who are Jewish, Christian, Sikh, Muslim, whatever,
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cannot be compelled to go against their religion.
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These are the same media who are all in a tizzy about Quebec banning religious symbols
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How do you square that with trying to force religious people in Alberta to do things they don't want?
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I think the fake news media are the enemy of the people.
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It gives the Chinese the ability, if they choose to use it, to access all kinds of information,
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civilian, intelligence, military, that could be very, very compromising.
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So I, much as I disagree with the Trump administration on a number of things, on this,
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their concern about Huawei, I believe they're right.
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As a matter of protection, would the United States have to have a slightly different security
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And that will throw the Five Eyes collaboration, which serves the security interests of every
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I don't see how we can share in the way we have.
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That's Susan Rice, former national security advisor to Barack Obama.
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I can't think of a single thing she would support Donald Trump on.
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But she says on the concerns for Huawei, the massive Chinese telecommunications company,
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Trump is right, and that it is a danger that every country in the West should ward off.
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Well, joining us now to talk about this issue is the author of a new essay on this subject
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from the Gate Stone Institute entitled, Do Not Support China's Huawei, Cripple It Instead.
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And the author of this piece is our good friend Gordon Chang, who is also the author of The
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You can follow him on Twitter at Gordon G. Chang.
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I was a little bit surprised to hear such a hard line from Susan Rice, a Democrat.
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That suggests this is a bipartisan security issue, isn't it?
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And China is becoming a bipartisan issue as well, because there's a perception across the
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American political spectrum that China is a malign actor.
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Now, not everyone shares that view, but many people do.
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And indeed, we are starting to see consensuses form on what to do about China.
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I saw recently Pew Research, which regularly surveys countries around the world on China,
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has shown a hardening of opinions towards China, especially here in Canada.
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And I link that to Huawei, as you know, when Canada arrested a senior executive from Huawei
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and they retaliated by virtually, I would say, kidnapping two Canadian civilians.
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I think Canadians were sort of shaken out of this dream that we can all have a harmonious
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capitalist relationship with China as if it was just, you know, the UK or France or something.
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Do you think that ordinary Canadians and Americans are starting to get China's number, that they're
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They're more about, you know, stealing intellectual property, having unfair trade deals that are
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Do you think ordinary grassroots people in Canada and the United States are starting to figure
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And that is reflected in the Pew and the other surveys.
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You know, Ezra, it's not like the Trump administration is innately hostile to China or, you know, anybody
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What's driving this is Xi Jinping, the Chinese ruler.
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And he's doing things that are forcing countries to understand the essential and hostile nature
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You know, you refer to the detention of Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Huawei,
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and what China did in response, which is the grabbing of the two Michaels, and also stopping
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imports of Canadian canola and other commodities.
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And we got to understand that China poses this mortal threat, not only to Canada, not only to
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the United States, but to the international system as a whole.
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In your essay, you say that 5G is shorthand for the fifth generation of wireless communication.
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This would be similar to moving from a landline on your desk to a cell phone.
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And why should we be afraid if Huawei has all the hardware and the technical infrastructure?
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Well, 5G will have super fast speeds, maybe 2,000 times faster than 4G.
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This will permit all the devices in the world to be connected through what has been now called
00:18:14.480
So if everything is connected, it's all on Huawei equipment, and Huawei certainly is a leader
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in providing 5G equipment around the world, then what's going to happen is that China will
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But also, there's an other side to this, and that is as devices are connected in the
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Internet of Things, China very well be able to manipulate them.
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So for instance, as I point out in the piece, you know, they could drive your car off the
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They could do all sorts of things with control of 5G.
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Now, I like the headline of your piece, do not support China's Huawei.
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That's, I guess, what Susan Rice would be saying.
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How could the West cripple what is a mighty company?
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I'd say it's almost on par with an Apple or a Samsung or a Google.
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In fact, it might even be ahead of a couple of those.
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How are you going to take on such a mighty company?
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Well, you know, first of all, it is a mighty company.
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It's the world's largest telecom equipment provider.
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But it's dependent on technology from other countries, especially the United States.
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You know, it relies on Google's Android system, and it relies on the Play Store.
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So, while it can sell phones in China, because cell phones in China don't have access to the
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Google Play Store, they, you know, it's absolutely essential everywhere else in the world.
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Also, it depends on chips from around the world.
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Not only American chips, but Japanese, South Korean, Taiwan made chips.
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And if the United States is able to get countries to not sell those chips, Huawei is in trouble,
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because although China is developing its own chipsets, it is far behind.
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Some of the criticisms of Google and Facebook and companies like that is that they're so big,
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So, there's some talk in Washington about trust-busting or breaking up those huge, huge companies.
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Is there anything that could be done legally like that to Huawei, or does it come down to
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I mean, you say it's the largest company in the world.
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Are there other creative tools that Congress could use to take a run at it?
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Or are there creative tools that the Justice Department in the U.S. can use?
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So, for instance, you know, finding Meng Wanzhou in Vancouver and, you know, issuing a request
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This is really going to hurt Huawei, because she's the CFO.
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She is, some people think, supposed to be the next chairman of Huawei.
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So, you know, there's a lot that the U.S. can do.
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And, of course, as I mentioned, Huawei equipment, Huawei itself and many of its subsidiaries are on
00:21:26.540
That prevents U.S. companies from selling or licensing technology to Huawei without approval,
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These are basically death sentences if they're enforced.
00:21:39.960
Now, what I talked about is that right now, the Commerce Department is thinking of granting
00:21:49.920
Well, in some ways, Donald Trump is not afraid of getting very brutal on sanctions.
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He's actually, despite the narrative that he's a Russian pawn, he's strengthened sanctions
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He is very blunt in his threats to Turkey lately.
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So, simply putting trades with Huawei, selling chips to Huawei on a banned list would seem almost
00:22:24.800
Is it just companies who think, wow, that's a huge market.
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We'll get rid, as Vladimir Lenin said, the capitalists can be counted on to sell us the
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So, for instance, you have the chip companies that want to sell to Huawei.
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And what they've been doing is they've been trying to figure out a way around these entity
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So, for instance, they think that chips made by U.S.
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companies abroad are not covered by the entity list.
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There's all sorts of things that they're doing.
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But they are the parties that have asked for exemptions.
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Google, you mentioned, has also asked for a waiver from the entity list restrictions.
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Commerce Department has received 260 requests for waivers from the entity list rules.
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And so, you can see that there are a lot of companies out there that are the lobby for Huawei.
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I saw just today a video from Xinhua News, one of their propaganda outlets, of robots, Chinese
00:23:35.440
robots that look like little dogs or something.
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They call it the Dreying robot, weighs just under 100 pounds.
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And my immediate thought was, I've seen that robot before in the United States from a company
00:23:54.100
And it's the same thing when I look at the latest Chinese fighter planes.
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It's so clearly stolen or espionaged the blueprints.
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Is that an angle that America can take steps on?
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Because I saw that little robot dog, and I thought, that is exactly, I mean, I guess theoretically
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it could have been developed at the same time, but I don't believe that.
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And Google probably have half its invention stolen too.
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Is this just speculation on my part, or is there anything tangible here?
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The U.S. believes that somewhere between, let's say, $150 to $600 billion a year of U.S.
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That's from the Commission on the Theft of U.S. Intellectual Property, otherwise known
00:24:50.480
It's also derived from estimates that the U.S. trade representative put together and issued
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So there's a lot of investigation that has gone into those conclusions.
00:25:05.920
And the one thing that the Trump administration has done is impose tariffs under Section 301
00:25:10.820
of the Trade Act of 1974 as a remedy for the theft of U.S. IP.
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It's Canadian IP and IP from Europe and elsewhere.
00:25:21.860
So China has been just stealing all this stuff.
00:25:26.440
Well, China has a J-20, which looks just like our F-35 and which is built by Americans,
00:25:36.960
And, of course, there's a story of Nortel, which was once the Canadian telecom champion,
00:25:43.880
Gordon, you always give us so much to think about.
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It's called, Do Not Support China's Huawei, Cripple It.
00:25:53.500
Instead, it was published by our friend to the Gatestone Institute.
00:25:56.780
I'm always grateful for your time because I see you on such high-profile programs around
00:26:01.940
And it's just a delight to steal you for 10 or 15 minutes for the rebel.
00:26:13.600
Our friend Gordon Chang, you can follow him on Twitter at Gordon G. Chang.
00:26:17.520
He's also the author of The Coming Collapse of China.
00:26:30.620
Hey, welcome back on my monologue yesterday about Chinese police patrolling the streets in
00:26:36.060
Well, I don't know if you saw my monologue the other day, that there are Chinese People's
00:26:47.880
Liberation Army legions forming in Canada, marching in Canada.
00:26:55.140
Now, they're not patrolling on the streets, but that's like five minutes from now, isn't
00:27:00.140
On my interview with Peter Downing from Wexit, Alberta Maurice writes,
00:27:03.340
I'm just glad to see that someone has taken on the separatist mantle and is already actively
00:27:09.520
Hey, Peter, don't forget to take the BC interior with you when you go.
00:27:21.300
I was trying to get some answers to what the plan is.
00:27:29.920
Did you want Jason Kenney to leave with Alberta, leave with all the West?
00:27:36.340
And maybe he hasn't figured out all those angles yet.
00:27:39.900
But I think those are pretty important details.
00:27:45.040
I can't fault the guy for jumping in to this interesting conversation, though.
00:27:53.220
On the climate letter that 11,000 so-called scientists signed, Lorraine writes,
00:27:58.420
This story about the climate and the 11,000 scientists had me really scared.
00:28:08.240
I now feel a little better after listening to The Rebel.
00:28:12.120
Such a lie is dangerous for people, especially children and older people.
00:28:15.820
Do you think they could be sued for putting so much fear in people?
00:28:32.720
And so I'm not easily persuaded by journalists, especially one of such low station as Suhana
00:28:40.260
But I don't think most people are walking around as defensively as I am with regards to the
00:28:52.900
I'm sure it was on CBC Kids News, that propaganda channeling the kids.
00:29:02.780
That's what I hate about Greta Thunberg, is she is infecting other children with paranoia and
00:29:09.420
depression and, God forbid, in some cases, suicidal thought.
00:29:13.180
But, um, I mean, and you're, you say you're a 68-year-old woman.
00:29:19.240
I, I think that people of all ages are susceptible to this stress and paranoia.
00:29:24.960
For the state broadcaster to engage in it is extra gross, because we have to pay for it.
00:29:33.900
Until Monday, when we'll have our Remembrance Day special.
00:29:36.900
On behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home, good night.